Philippine bank at center of $81 mln heist names new president

Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC) said on Monday that its board has appointed a new president replacing Lorenzo Tan, who resigned but was cleared by the Philippine bank of any wrongdoing in a $81 million money laundering scandal.

Gil Buenaventura, currently president and CEO of state-run Development Bank of the Philippines, will take over as RCBC president and CEO from July 1, RCBC said in a statement.

The veteran banker is a former senior executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Bank of the Philippine Islands, one of the country's three biggest lenders.

RCBC, the country's ninth-largest lender by assets, said on May 6 that it had accepted the resignation of Tan.

In early February, unidentified hackers infiltrated the computers at the Bangladesh central bank and tried to transfer $951 million from its settlement account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Most transfers were blocked, but $81 million was sent to four accounts at a branch of RCBC and then moved through a remittance firm and later to casinos and gambling agents. Most of that money is missing.

The Philippine Senate is scheduled to resume its money-laundering probe on May 19.